


the details

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Chapter and Verse (Varric Tethras x Min Hawke) [7]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 00:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13581951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Every week, Hawke and Varric have a standing date at the Hanged Man for drinks and conversations.  Every week the laughs and the ale are the same.  But the devil's in the details, and even an author like Varric doesn't always control the way the story goes.





	the details

If Varric had written it himself, it would have been far more dramatic.  There were so many possibilities, shimmering brilliantly now in his memory.  The first time Hawke beat him at Wicked Grace, slamming her hand down on the table and leaping up onto her chair.  The frantic night he and Merrill and Fenris rushed her to Anders’ with a cracked skull and blood at the corner of her mouth.  Maker’s breath, he’d been frightened for her.  The fireside on the Wounded Coast, when the others had fallen asleep and he and she talked, hours long, into the bright and piercing dawn.

It hadn’t been any of those moments, if he was honest.  Which he rarely was, but only because embellishment was usually far more interesting.  Could you blame a dwarf for that?  Still, though, he’d have picked something grander if it had been up to him.  

It was such a little thing, really.  A song.

Min Hawke wasn’t much of a singer.  Her sister Bethany had had a much finer voice, naturally clear and strong, a voice she used in songs around the camp at night and skilled humming when they walked the streets.  Min had hummed along, but she always refused to sing aloud.  “I’m rubbish, Bethany, you know that,” she’d protest.

“I know it,” Bethany would say cheerfully.  “It’s one of the few things I can best you in.  Why do you think I ask you to do it?”

And Hawke would break down, laughing, and sing something silly and ribald and raw, or a children’s nursery rhyme, or a mock-sober line of the Chant.   It was passable.  Not great.  Bethany would giggle every time, her voice ringing out to join Hawke’s like a bell.

After Bethany fell ill, and was taken by the Wardens, Hawke was… gray, for a long time.  Varric could see it in the way her jokes came out forced and flat; he could see it reflected in her pale eyes.  He tried to be there for her.  That’s what friends did, wasn’t it?  He didn’t know what it was like to miss a sibling you still liked, but he missed the brother Bartrand could be when he wasn’t an arse, so maybe that was close enough.

“Drinks are on me, Hawke,” he said, every week.  Sometimes it was upstairs in his quarters with one or two of the others and a deck of cards.  Sometimes it was downstairs in the thick of things in the midst of the tavern, with the whole gang rowdy around them.  Sometimes it was just the two of them.  

“Why, how many do you think we can balance on your chest?” she said, every week.  If it wasn’t that, it was another terrible joke, and the same old laughs.  He hoped it helped.

Most of the time they stayed away from the big shit.  The scary shit.  He figured there were better people for the things he could see in the set of her jaw, the worry pulling at the new lines in the corners of her eyes.  Anders, probably.  They seemed to have a connection, and if that helped her, Varric wasn’t one to judge.  She still kept their standing date in the Hanged Man every week, and that was enough for Varric.

Or it was.  He couldn’t say what was different, that night.  “Drinks are on me, Hawke,” said Varric.

“They are, are they?  Perhaps your true calling was in the circus,” said Hawke, and she grinned at him, teeth bright and crooked in her wide smile.  She brushed her dark hair out of her eyes.  She was dressed simply tonight, cutting a lean silhouette in a long tunic and tall boots.  “Do you know how much I’d pay to see you balance a tankard on your head and walk ten paces?”

“I don’t think so.  The nearest circus is in Orlais, and I’m too lazy to go that far,” said Varric.  “You know they’d never have me, anyway.  Too mouthy.”

“And hairy,” she said, winking at his chest.  “Your chest would distract from the drink-balancing.  All right, then.  What are we having tonight?”

“Well, let’s see… given this place is a shithole, I think ale’s as good as it gets.”  He nodded at Corff the bartender, and Corff nodded back at their table.

They chatted.  He didn’t even remember all the details of their conversation, a fact he kicked himself for later when he sought to remember the night again.  The drinks didn’t come right away, despite the fact that the tavern wasn’t that full.  And Hawke swung her feet under the table, brushing against his accidentally, and she hummed before she began to sing under her breath.  

It was just a little song.  A waiting-song, a boredom-song, something he didn’t think he could have pulled up from memory if you’d asked him at knifepoint.

But the song hummed in his throat, matching her notes, as if he’d known it forever.  Her feet brushed against his every few beats, a slip of leather against leather.  He listened to her soft singing, idly resting his chin on his hand, and it wasn’t until she spoke that he realized the sound in his ears was not from her alone.

“Varric,” Hawke said, looking… grateful, almost.  Pleased.  Her olive cheeks had gone pink.  “I didn’t know you knew that song.”

“I – what?” he asked, startled.  “Come on, Hawke, you know I don’t sing.”

“Well, I don’t know what else you call moving your lips and making musical noise,” Hawke said, her mouth tucked into a quiet grin.  She tilted her head and gazed at him.  “You had the right words, from what I could hear.  Where did you pick it up?”

“Around,” said Varric, suddenly defensive.  He was nonplussed, seeing the expression on her face.

“It’s Fereldan, you know.  One Bethany and I used to sing back in Lothering when we’d wait for dinner.  I didn’t think anyone in Kirkwall knew it.  Did you learn it from us?  I can’t believe you were paying attention.”  She shrugged.  “Well, perhaps I’ll have a singing partner again.  Though the others might throw stones at us if they’re forced to be in the same vicinity.”

“I – uh, I don’t sing,” he said again, stupidly.  

The sudden appearance of Anders and Isabela, fresh in from the street, diverted Hawke’s attention.  She leapt up to meet Anders, giving him a quick embrace and a peck on the lips before sitting down beside him.  She wasn’t just pink now; she was brick red, but looking utterly delighted.  Isabela elbowed Hawke before sitting down beside her and exchanging winks with Hawke and Anders both.

“I’ll go see about those drinks, then,” said Varric.  He got to his feet and walked automatically to the bar, but his head spun.

 _I don’t sing._  

Yet Hawke’s voice, rough around the edges, nothing special, had seemed so sweet –

Varric stumbled right into the bar, the jolt half-stunning him.  The bartender peered down at him skeptically.  “I’d say I’m cutting you off, Varric, but I know you ain’t had any yet tonight.  Something wrong?”

Varric stared up at the grim man, his stomach sinking.  He swallowed, searching for something to say.  “Yeah.  Where’s our ale, Corff?”

Corff waved a hand at him.  “Finishing up your order now.  Hold on, then, I’ll have one of the girls bring them out.  On your tab?”

“You know the routine,” said Varric in a strained, hearty voice.  Corff turned away, and Varric looked down at his hands.  They were trembling.

 _Shit._  

“Varric!  Come on back!  The drinks are here!” Isabela crowed.  How long had he been standing there?  Varric shuffled back to the table, taking a deep breath as he sat down.  His hand tightened on a mug of ale, and when they raised their glasses together for a cheer, he let himself look at Hawke again, sitting so close to Anders.

Hawke, her dark hair playing about the neck of her shirt, soft strands framing her face.  Hawke, her pale blue eyes striking against her olive skin.  Hawke, her red mouth curled in another smile, this one fierce and full of joy.   _Hawke._

His mug chimed against hers, and he did not hear the toast she gave.  He heard only his own, wondering, mumbling, too faint for the others to hear.  

“To you, Min.”

The taste of ale was bitter and familiar, just a little thing in a night full of them.  He drank it down; it was prosaic, pedestrian, completely without embellishment.  Nothing he’d normally waste time writing about.  Except on a night like tonight, maybe.

Funny how he’d thought he could control the story.  Funny how he’d forgotten he was in it, too.


End file.
